RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazil and the United Kingdom signed on Wednesday, August 21st, a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to encourage trade between the two countries.
The Prosperity Fund, a UK inter-ministerial fund intends to invest up to 20 million Pounds Sterling (close to R$100 million) to support the inclusion of Brazilian companies abroad.
The fund will finance actions in five areas: insertion of micro, small, and medium-sized companies in global value chains; improvement in port efficiency; support for Brazil’s access to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD); intellectual property and regulation.
Representing Brazil, the document was signed by the executive secretary of the Ministry of Economy, Marcelo Guaranys, and by the special secretary of Foreign Trade and International Affairs, Marcos Troyjo. It was also signed by Conor Burns, the minister of the United Kingdom’s Department of International Trade.
According to the Ministry of Economy, the MOU allows increasing efficiency in foreign trade operations and creates opportunities for a more inclusive trade system for different-sized companies.
The actions to encourage the international inclusion of Brazilian companies and improve the ports’ efficiency, said the Ministry of Economy, should start in September. The intellectual property project is in the bidding phase, and the document that defines the regulation project’s guidelines is about to be concluded.
With regard to support for Brazil’s admission to the OECD, which brings together the most industrialized economies on the planet, the United Kingdom government and the organization signed an MOU in May to expedite the projects’ execution by the Secretariat of the Organization.
The British fund further announced that it intends to invest another 80 million Pounds in Brazil (about R$400 million) in the areas of trade facilitation, business environment, energy, smart cities, green finance, and health.
The Prosperity Fund has a budget of 1.2 billion Pounds (around R$6 billion) to invest in developing countries by March 2023.